First Reading
Exodus 20:1–17
And God spoke all these words, saying,
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
“You shall not murder.
“You shall not commit adultery.
“You shall not steal.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” (ESV)
Second Reading
1 Corinthians 1:18–25
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (ESV)
Gospel Text
John 2:13–22
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, both the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. (ESV)
Comments and Questions for Discussion
First Reading
There isn’t a lot to be said about the Ten Commandments that hasn’t been said. Even so, I will try to draw together a few insights that I hope you haven’t read before.
Worship God only.
Back in the Divergence for 5 Epiphany a few weeks ago I made note of the way that the middle portion of Isaiah known as Second Isaiah (chapters 40-55) are the turning point for the people of God as they move from claiming God as the greatest among a variety of Gods to the only God with any reality.
The belief in the existence of other gods is amply demonstrated by the command, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Even God does not require that the people of Israel deny the reality of other gods at this point. In a discussion I read of the prophet Hosea, Israel’s faithlessness goes right back to the beginning. While they have been “married” to Yahweh, they have long dallied with other suitors. It isn’t until the reforms of Josiah that we begin to see the demand of worship of God, and God alone. (Rather than God before other gods.) It surprised me to learn that the worship of other gods, even after Yahweh, was taken for granted until Josiah.
God is a jealous God.
This aspect of God’s nature is one that makes many of us squirm. I don’t know about you, but when I read this I can’t help thinking of the insanely jealous husbands who wind up murdering their spouses for offenses they make up in their own minds. I don’t want a God like that.
I’d like to look at God’s jealousy from a different point of view, though. I would look at it from the perspective of the Cross. The Cross is the place where God surrenders Their right to retribution for our unfaithfulness and gathers us back into Their arms as Hosea did with Gomer. God chooses not to “visit our iniquity” on us. The Cross is the cost of forgiveness.
When I view God’s jealousy from that place, I find that I do want a God whose desire for me is so fierce that it is “like a refiner’s fire.” It consumes utterly anything that stands between us, even righteous retribution. I’ve written similarly elsewhere in other Divergences, but this came to mind as I pondered the Ten Commandments.
Salvation comes first.
I have mentioned this before, too, but now that we’re actually reading the Decalogue as part of our Sunday text I want to draw your attention to something. The Ten Commandments are not things that God’s people must do to be saved. They are things God’s people will do because they are saved, because they have been saved.
The Ten Commandments do not begin with “You shall have no other Gods before me.” They begin with, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” God saves first and then shows us what it can be like to live in the awareness of a Love That Saves. From the very beginning this was meant to be the Law’s function. As with the Gospel itself, humans have twisted the precepts of God until that which was meant to be freeing and sweet on our tongues became bitter and enslaving. The Ten Commandments are indecipherable apart from God’s repeated to decision to save first and give guidance later.
Second Reading
Our reading from 1 Corinthians this week comes from early in the first chapter. It is difficult to interpret it without some context. Should you like to go back and look over the short introduction I wrote to 1 Corinthians earlier this year, HERE’S A LINK. But I think that looking back a few verses may help us understand what Paul is talking about here.
It always does Paul a disservice when we read passages like this one as though they were meant to stand on their own. I can think of no case where any teaching of Paul’s can be safely excerpted from its context. This one is no different. Yes, Paul contrasts human wisdom with God’s wisdom but he does this for a reason. To understand the reason we have only to go back a few verses.
I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. (1 Corinthians 1:10–17, ESV)
There are divisions in the church, and these divisions can clearly be traced to the allegiance some give to one teacher or another. “Wisdom,” human wisdom, is highly valued. You may recall from the introduction to 1 Corinthians that, while not many of the members of the congregation were wealthy enough to have had rhetorical education, public competitions in rhetoric were a part of their daily life. Such comparisons of one orator with another might easily have seeped into their appreciation of those who brought the Gospel to them. It was normal for them to value one person’s teaching over that of another. Paul had eschewed high rhetoric in his sharing of the Gospel with the Corinthians, preferring to minister in the power of the Spirit. His message of humility and unity was likely less preferred amongst the congregation. He wants to draw attention back to the Gospel and away from the skill of the people who have taught them. (I noted in an earlier Divergence, 5 Epiphany B, that Paul actually demonstrates his mastery of many of the rhetorical devices that he had earlier forgone in chapter 9 of the letter.)
I am not totally blind here to the irony of writing about Paul’s preference of Spirit to gracious words for communicating the Gospel while I pile up words of my own!
Gospel Text
If you look back at the text from John 2 as I’ve copied it from the ESV you’ll note one word in italics, “both.” That’s because I became so frustrated with our translators that I could not allow that mistranslation to stand. The word they had in that verse was “with” where I have “both.” Translating it “with” has Jesus using that whip of cords to drive the humans out along “with” the animals. Translating it “both” makes it clear that Jesus used it to drive “both” sheep and oxen out of the Temple. There are other good words for “with” in Greek, and if John had meant to say “with” in this sense, he probably would have said, “kai.” This is his preferred word for “with.” But he says “te”, which is better translated “both.” Jesus drove out both sheep and oxen to save them.
And Jesus’ words to the sellers of pigeons seem to me to be badly misunderstood, too. The exchange, or “trade” that concerns Jesus is not money for animals, but the lives of animals for our lives. The creation of a different victim to spare ourselves, the creation of a scapegoat. It is not the exchange of money that makes this practice objectionable. Had they been running a bake sale or selling Girl Scout cookies (It’s that time of year!) this would not have been an issue. This is about the exchange, the trading of one life for another. Jesus came to bring an end to that exchange, to sacrifice.
This then makes much better sense of His response to the question, “What sign do you give us for doing these things?” He points to the Cross, to the sacrifice that will end all sacrifice, as the sign that His emptying of the Temple of its victims is His Father’s will.
Having said all that, I really must address the large elephant in the room. In John, Jesus’ “cleansing of the Temple” occurs very near the beginning of a three year public ministry. In the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), it happens in the last week of His life. This difference is very difficult for me to harmonize.
In the end I have come to the conclusion that John and the synoptics speak of two different events. Elements of the first have bled into the second, but this is how I sort it out.
In John, Jesus comes in and overturns tables and drives out the animals (for their own sakes). He does not predict the destruction of the Temple, but does make veiled reference to His death and resurrection, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Jesus does not say this while He is in the Temple in the synoptics during Holy Week, but the Matthew and Mark are aware that He said it at some time. These words are misquoted as part of Jesus’ trial, “This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days.’” So also in Matthew and Mark the crowds mock Jesus’ claim to be able to “rebuild the Temple” in three days, so Jesus clearly said something of the sort. I believe He said this in the earlier incident, and it was later conflated with His prophecy of the destruction of the Temple during Holy Week.
This process of conflation of the two events then allows for the bringing forward of the “cleansing” portion of the readings into the Holy Week events in which I believe that Jesus entered the Temple and taught, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’(Isaiah) but you make it a den of robbers. (Jeremiah)’” By attaching these words to Jesus’ actions from earlier in His career, Matthew and Mark have reinterpreted the turning over of tables as a kind of enacted prophecy, akin to the potter’s remaking of a vessel in Jeremiah (which was also a prophecy of disaster). This image of Jeremiah’s may well have been brought to mind for Jesus’ hearers, for they would surely have known that this quote (from Jer. 7:11) was a part of Jeremiah’s prophecy of the destruction of the Temple of Solomon, which came to pass. No one could stand in the Temple precincts and hear “den of robbers” and not hear a threat to the Second Temple. That threat nearly got Jeremiah killed. It did contribute to the death of Jesus.
The synoptic Gospels all compress what was a three year career into one. I believe that process of compression/conflation led them to combine two events into one. This still doesn’t account for John’s omission of the Isaiah/Jeremiah prophecy of the destruction of the Temple. It is difficult for me to imagine that such momentous words would have been intentionally omitted, so the only solution I can find is to acknowledge that John and the synoptic evangelists relied on different sources, and that these words were unknown to John’s.
It is interesting to me that John’s Gospel shows so little interest in the destruction of the Temple. I would like at some future point to dig a little deeper there, but all that I have at present is idle speculation. It think it’ll be worth pondering.
So there’s our elephant. And you know the story of the three blind men who come upon an elephant, right? One finds a leg and declares, “I’ve found a tree!” Another collides with the elephant’s side and says, “I’ve found a wall!” The third encounters the trunk and says, “I’ve found a snake!”
I’m not sure which part of the elephant I’ve discovered, but I can be pretty sure there’s more to it than I can see!
For a more easily printable version of this Divergence, please CLICK HERE.
